Erev Yom Kippur

Our Next Big Move!

By Rabbi Label Lam

Live as if you were already living for the second time and as if you had
acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now. (Victor
Frankel)

A person should see himself as if he is ½ guilty and ½ meritorious.…
Because the world is judged by a majority (of merits or demerits) and the
individual is determined by a majority, one who does a Mitzvah tips
himself and the whole world to the side of merit while if one makes a
single violation, woe to him who inclines himself and the whole world to
the side of guilt! (Tractate Kiddushin 40)

It is admittedly hard to see the grand consequences of our actions and
attitudes as prescribed by our sages. It requires either deep trust in
their words or a gymnastic imagination. Maybe the following two stories
will help illustrate how far, even in a local sense, our pedestrian
decisions reach.

A young man asked a Rabbi a simple question. “How do I do teshuvah
(repent) for not bentching (saying the blessings after eating a meal)?”
The Rabbi looked at him quizzically. The Rabbi asked him if he put on
tefillin or ate kosher. The young man shook his head “no” and insisted on
knowing how to do teshuvah for not bentching.

The Rabbi asked a number of other pointed questions that led him to
understand just how far away this young man lived from Torah and Mitzvos.
Eventually he asked him the question that had troubled him from the
beginning of the conversation. “It seems there are hundreds of other items
that need fixing first! Why bentching?”

The young man answered the Rabbi, “That’s where I started! I had just
finished eating a meal and my friends honked impatiently outside. I ran
out the door without bentching. My mother asked if I had bentched. I
said “yes” and as I passed the Mezuzah I though lightning would strike me
but it didn’t. That Shabbos I went some place with my friends and we
arrived a little late. No lightning. After that I allowed myself to
indulge in non-kosher food. Soon the yarmulke came off, other more serious
things followed, and here I am years later looking like I look and I need
to know, ‘How do I do teshuvah for not benching?’”

My wife and I were walking around our modest block and we noticed that the
neighbors around the corner had made extraordinary changes in the
appearance of their house. There was this lovely bay window filled with
ornaments and a Chinese garden with lollipop trees and a well manicured
lawn that the husband was cutting with mustache scissors.

My wife asked his wife who was standing out front surveying the
progress, “Arlene, lovely improvements! What inspired all this?” She
answered shyly, “Well, actually I just needed to replace a few tiles in
the bathroom. We couldn’t find a matching color so we redid all of them.
Then the wallpaper looked ugly and old in contrast so we did that too. The
medicine cabinet seemed decrepit in comparison and we replaced that. The
bathroom became the nicest room in the house but when we walked out the
rug seemed old and so we pulled it up and polished the floors. Then the
front window seemed a dull match for the floors. We decided to install a
bay window. When we looked out from the bay window we noticed how unkempt
the lawn had been so we called a gardener and he created this lovely
designer garden with sculptured trees!”

It’s worth considering, especially around this time of the year before we
take another step, just how far that step might carry us. In reflecting
backwards we might want to first investigate what decisions we made got us
to where we are and what we discover might greatly impact our next big
move.